I'm wondering if there is a text (either in print or ebook) that offers the ability to learn Latin and Greek side by side. I studied Latin in college a few years back and I'm currently refreshing my memory with Wheelock. (I used a different text then.) Sadly, I did not learn Greek, and I'm planning on using Mastronarde and other resources to correct that deficiency. I'd like to be able to translate my elementary Greek into Latin and vice versa, and though I suppose I don't need a formal text for that, I was wondering if such a thing exists. Many thanks to those who can point me in the right direction.

I would be surprised if any kind of dual Latin-Greek course has been written in recent history.

However, most students would study Latin from a young age, and after having attained proficiency in it, they would later proceed to Greek. Because of this, there are surely some Renaissance texts and later (probably through the 19th century) that are introductory Greek courses written in Latin. These courses would presume a knowledge of Latin and teach Greek on that model. I don't imagine there are any that attempt to teach both languages at the same time through some other medium (like English).

Depending on the strength of your Latin, you could poke around Google Books for some of these courses. However, except for the novelty factor, it's probably not worth the effort when you're just starting out learning Greek. The teaching methods and printing of most of these texts are probably not conducive to a modern reader. You'd definitely want to avoid texts where the Greek is presented with many ligatures (short-hand symbols to represent common combinations of letters). These were common in their day, but they are not used now and pretty much indecipherable for the contemporary Greek student.

In contrast, there are good contemporary courses for both languages in English that you could complete individually. If you wanted to cross pollinate, you could practice translating a sentence of Latin into Greek and vice versa.

There are comparative grammars of Greek and Latin, but they aren't really intended for learning the language so much as linguistic/philological reference and investigation (I'm thinking of the New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin)

Here is a random Jesuit book I found from 1727: Institutionem linguae graecaeYou'll notice on page (x) there is a list of the ligatures used in the text. You'll also notice that the teaching method/printing isn't exactly user friendly.Here's another edition(ligatures on page 7).Here's a Greek grammar by the humanist Melanchthon.

Many thanks for your reply and suggestions. I felt such a book did not exist, and I agree with your thoughts that translating from one language to the other as I learn would be best. Such an exercise would be most fruitful, I feel, for working toward "fluency" in both languages.

A comparative grammar would be interesting, but at this point in my studies, the philological text as you suggested is outside my current realm of interest and concern.

Once you're into the grammar of Greek & Latin a bit, there's an interesting book entitled Comparative Greek & Latin Syntax by Moore (London, 1957). I don't know of anything that starts one in both languages' grammar right out of the gate, though. I suppose one could use Moore's syntax in conjunction with independent primers to link your studies together.

The Greek in the Bible would be Koine, though, whereas a lot of people recommend starting with Homeric, then working your way up to Attic and then Koine. (If, however, you're interested only in Koine, might as well start with it.)

Are there any online resources, then, for attempting this sort of thing? Translating from one language to the other seems to be the best option thus far, and as I'm only starting Greek, I'll probably be doing G->L much more than L->G at first. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Finch wrote:Are there any online resources, then, for attempting this sort of thing? Translating from one language to the other seems to be the best option thus far, and as I'm only starting Greek, I'll probably be doing G->L much more than L->G at first. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Just googling around turns up some Greek/Latin bibles, but these tend to be quite antiquated. Here's one by Erasmus.

I'm sure there are better ones out there. At minimum, you could acquire the Vulgate and the Greek new testament separately, but they you'd have to be on the look out for varying translations and interpretations.

I have a bi-lingual New Testament - the Greek and Latin are on opposite pages, it is great as you can see how the latin has translated the greek text. The greek text is Nestle-Aland 27th edition, and the latin is Vulgate Nova, both have critical apparatus. The title is Novum Testamentum Graece Et Latine if do a search you should be able to find one.

Along with the NT in Latin and Koine Greek, the Romans translated Classical texts into Latin. Some passages that exist in both the original and the translation. Hopefully some other Textkitter will respond with details, because I can't quite remember exactly what is extant. There must be a list someplace of all the passages.

Cicero's works contain some of his translations of Greek. It's only small bits (and scattered), but some of it exists in the original Greek (a passage from Sophocles' Trachiniae springs to mind). If you could find a list of what he translates G-to-L, you could work on your own translations and then compare them to Cicero's. Even with his translations of things that don't survive in the original would be interesting to study.

Speaking as someone trained in applying the findings of modern linguistic science to teaching foreign languages and as a retired college instructor of English and ESL/EFL, I would have to say that this textbook uses a pedagogical method that makes learning the skill of READING either language extremely difficult. And I assume that most prospective students of Latin or non-modern Greek have reading as their primary goal.

If you wish to learn to read Latin well, I highly recommend the materials of Hans H. Ørberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata. I am using them for self-study. The exercises, and, wonder of wonders, there are many of them (contrary to the paltry few sentences given in most textbooks), are outstanding from the pedagogical viewpoint of an applied linguistic scientist. Another excellent feature is that the readings form a connected discourse, telling the story of a typical Roman family. And, multas Deo gratias! there are no translation exercises. All is in Latin. A separate Latin-English glossary is available as part of the series. Although the grammar is also presented in Latin as part of the textbook lessons, there is a small book that explains the grammar in English. The presentation of the glossary and grammatical explanations in English as separate booklets instead of their inclusion in the textbook itself also helps the student to focus on learning to read Latin.

Developing translation skills (Latin to English, or even worse, English to Latin) is a waste of time for students who wish to learn to READ in Latin. Of course, if you're preparing for an exam that requires the ability to translate, then you need to develop such skills. It is unfortunate that various educational systems still require students to translate from Latin to English and even vice-versa as part of their examination process. Who on earth does that nowadays in life outside the Academy? Very few, no doubt.

Now, with regard to learning to read in non-modern Greek (Homeric through Byzantine), I haven't been able to find any printed materials of the quality of Hans Ørberg's. Many texts follow the outdated pedagogical tradition of a short text (not connected discourse), a small vocabulary list, grammatical explanations, perhaps one or two exercises dealing with the declension or conjugation of pertinent parts of speech, and two translation exercises (Greek-English, English-Greek). Those I have seen have to be supplemented by exercises prepared by the instructor of the course.

I'm still looking, however. I just ordered Rouse's Greek Boy: A Reader by W.H.D. Rouse, revised by Anne Mahoney, and Mahoney's recently published First Greek Course, which accompanies the reader. I hope the combination will be better than Athenaze, which doesn't present readings that contain enough repetition of grammatical structures to fix them in the mind of the student, à la Ørberg, e.g., Iulius vir Romanus est. Aemilia femina Romana est. Marcus est puer Romanus. Quintus quoque puer Romanus est. Iulia est puella Romana. Marcus et Quintus non viri, sed pueri sunt. Viri sunt Iulius et Medus et Davus. Aemilia et Delia et Syra sunt feminae. Estne femina Iulia? Non femina, sed parva puella est Iulia. (I have omitted the macrons to save time typing.) This very brief excerpt (7 lines of the text) is taken from Lesson Two of Part One (Familia Romana of the Ørberg textbook. All of these characters are presented again and again in different contexts, often in a very humorous fashion, with accompanying helpful illustrations, so that the reader gets to know them well and looks forward to reading more of their adventures. And do you see the repetition of structures using a limited vocabulary that I am looking for in a Greek course? It's certainly not in Athenaze or any other non-modern Greek textbook I've seen.

Has anyone ever seen a prescriptive grammar that uses this method to teach you how to read non-modern Greek? I love it! Lots of reading (121 lines of text in this lesson!) and helpful repetition of the grammatical structures and limited vocabulary (in this lesson, 35 words) that the lesson presents. I'm hoping that Rouse's Greek Boy does as well. We'll see.

Now with regard to learning Greek and Latin in tandem -- if your primary goal is to read materials in these languages, then do not waste your time learning how to translate from one language to the other or from Greek/Latin to English and vice-versa. If you wish to read well, you must move beyond the point of decoding. You must become so familiar with the grammatical patterns of the language that you know them almost as well as you do those of English (or your native language). By "familiarity" I mean subconscious recognition of the meaning of the patterns. To acquire this familiarity, I would limit the size of the vocabulary and stick with one author or style of writing until you know him or it well. I have ordered Fairy Tales in Latin: Fabulae Mirabiles to supplement the Ørberg materials. They are amusing and are at a level that I can handle fairly well. They will help me expand my vocabulary and improve my reading skills. So what if they are not in classical Latin. At this early point of my studies, I don't care. I just want tons of material to read at my level. Read, read, and read -- that is my motto. And prose, not poetry. KISS is the word, no? Eventually, I'll get to the "greats," but not now.

On the other hand, if you are primarily interested in the study of Greek and Latin as languages -- in their phonology, morphology, syntax, etc. -- and don't care about learning to read but only about studying their grammar, then ignore what I have said.

And if you are still interested in developing the skills of translation, set that as a goal for later on, for after you have learned how to read Latin and Greek well. And start with Greek to Latin, not vice-versa. The highly flexible syntax and the nuanced use of particles in Greek make (elegant) translation into that language a terror for anyone who is just learning it. And you should pick a specific period to make it far easier -- better even to pick a particular author's grammatical and stylistic patterns -- although even that is difficult if you choose the classical period, because the word order is so mobile. Translating into Koine would be easier, because the grammatical patterns were more fixed then.

It would be fascinating if you could peruse that thread and give us your take on it. Many methods are discussed. I, in particular, would like to know what you think about Schliemann's method. If you do comment, please put your comments in that thread. Thanks.

gfross wrote:Now, with regard to learning to read in non-modern Greek (Homeric through Byzantine), I haven't been able to find any printed materials of the quality of Hans Ørberg's. Many texts follow the outdated pedagogical tradition of a short text (not connected discourse), a small vocabulary list, grammatical explanations, perhaps one or two exercises dealing with the declension or conjugation of pertinent parts of speech, and two translation exercises (Greek-English, English-Greek). Those I have seen have to be supplemented by exercises prepared by the instructor of the course.

JACT's Reading Greek is not awful in this regard, and better (in my opinion) than Athenezae. Neither is as good as Ørberg by a loud shout. I've heard good things about Christophe Rico's Πολις, and the sample chapter looked pretty good to me. I'll let you know what that's like once it arrives. It is fairly well driven as conversational language and mostly in Greek. There is some French around the edges, but I cannot say how much.

Or something like that (with tighter vocabulary control--I've got three particles going. Ugh). But a lot more. Like 300 pages more. With all grammar explanations in Greek.

But I'm not holding my breath. An editor at Bolchazy-Carducci was very pessimistic about the chances anyone could write an Ørberg style text for Greek. She felt that no one could write Attic Greek well enough to pull the trick off. I worked with her long enough to know that she didn't just say stuff to be nasty.

I'm doubly not holding my breath because I've got a Spanish book modeled on Ørberg's Lingua Latina. It just isn't as good. The more language learning materials I see, the more I am in awe of what Ørberg did.

But that's all off-topic.

On topic, learn Latin. Learn Greek. Seek out good comprehensible input. Don't worry about translating one to the other. They're separate languages and merit separate study.

hi markos, have a look at the genders of the islands Ῥόδος and Λέσβος, double-check your use of πατρίς and also check your dative ending of θάλασσα (for this last point you may want to look at my summary of the history of the 1st decl endings here, pgs 8-10: http://www.freewebs.com/mhninaeide/pharrnotes.pdf )

i agree that an immersive book in attic would be great. i remember a fellow aussie wrote about this somewhere on the net, trying to find the article... here it is, the first link on this page: http://jeltzz.com/essays.html

cb wrote:hi markos, have a look at the genders of the islands Ῥόδος and Λέσβος, double-check your use of πατρίς and also check your dative ending of θάλασσα (for this last point you may want to look at my summary of the history of the 1st decl endings here, pgs 8-10: http://www.freewebs.com/mhninaeide/pharrnotes.pdf )

i agree that an immersive book in attic would be great. i remember a fellow aussie wrote about this somewhere on the net, trying to find the article... here it is, the first link on this page: http://jeltzz.com/essays.html

cheers, chad

Points taken. I was doing this more to take a swipe at the notion that it can't be done than to actually do it. I make no pretension that I could actually do such a thing--after all, I nearly wrote Κρετα. This should also give you a notion of the extent of my knowledge of Greek.

Grammar notes by Chad aside, if the point is immersion of the language of Attic Greek,this is far too repetitive to be anything close to genuine Greek. You won't find ἐστί this many times,and in the last sentence, the second clause would most likely end in accented οὔ with no repetition of the copula. I understand this method, just saying from experience it doesn't work. (My study bookin university contained a lot of such passages and none of them prepared me at all for tackling Plato'sApology in the second semester.)

NateD26 wrote:[T]his is far too repetitive to be anything close to genuine Greek.

Grammar flaws aside…

Have you ever seen Ørberg's Lingua Latina? The early stuff is monstrously repetitive, and classical Latin is not that repetitive either. Again, I make no pretense that I know Greek well enough to write such a text—only that such a thing could be done.

The idea behind the repetition is to drill in how εστι(ν) works. So that you never forget how. Ever. After, say, fifty sentences of this sort of thing, μεν... δε... is also clear (if you see μεν, δε is one to be ready for). If you see ο/η/το, εστι(ν) is the verb. If you see οι/αι/τα/ο και ο/κτλ, εισι(ν) is your verb. Pay attention to the reading—and there should be lots of it—and you'll not make (many) mistakes in reading. My poorly written sample is probably not even 1% of what a first chapter would include.

I've seen immersion textbooks too: quality varies. But one thing is certain: the beginning of any text doesn't resemble the complete language. Ever. It is simplified in grammar and vocabulary. This isn't to say that the grammar and vocabulary aren't used correctly—they're just simple. They also rely on huge amounts of in-class instruction using the target language. Advanced Spanish classes discuss Neruda in Spanish. Advanced Latin classes discuss Vergil in English. I bet the Latin class experience is true for Homer.

My copy of Crosby and Schaeffer, which I understand to be held in high regard, has zero connected reading of any sort until lesson 12. Zero. To be sure, there are isolated sentences without context as exercises, but zero connected reading until lesson 12. And the first thing in that lesson is talk about translation. Who cares about translation? If I want to read Plato in translation, Penguin already has that. If I want to read Plato in Greek, I've gotta learn Greek (admittedly, I may have to do some translation of spots here and there in my head to make sure I understood what I read, but that's another matter).

I'll bet all the tea in China that your university text had a large portion of its text in English. I'll bet that amount again that the grammar, save for a few examples, was wholly in English. Classical language textbooks, save for a isolated examples, are at least a century behind modern language teaching techniques. I love my Latin and Greek teachers, but they were teaching memorization of paradigms/grammar rules as the key. I hold them in high esteem, but their instruction didn't teach me to read Greek and Latin as such. I did learn to decode them. Vast amounts of basic, comprehensible beginner Latin taught me how to read.

(I assume based on your dim view of immersion techniques that) You managed to learn how to read Plato by memorizing vocabulary lists and paradigms. Good for you. Seriously. Just realize that you are in a very small minority. I have no clue how I'm going to get to Plato without some serious pre-reading of Greek. I suspect the majority of language learners are like me (if my reading in second language acquisition theory and personal, albeit anecdotal, experience are the norm).

Though my experience is primarily in Latin, the same seems to be true—if not moreso—in Greek.

Sinister Petrus wrote:The idea behind the repetition is to drill in how εστι(ν) works. So that you never forget how. Ever. After, say, fifty sentences of this sort of thing, μεν... δε... is also clear (if you see μεν, δε is one to be ready for). If you see ο/η/το, εστι(ν) is the verb. If you see οι/αι/τα/ο και ο/κτλ, εισι(ν) is your verb. Pay attention to the reading—and there should be lots of it—and you'll not make (many) mistakes in reading. My poorly written sample is probably not even 1% of what a first chapter would include.

1. A neuter plural subject takes a singular verb. weird rule but it took me a while to get used to it. 2. How many connected sentences with the copula included do you have in mind to appear in the firstchapter? Every sentence? Just a few on the first page? Doesn't the concept of how it works becomeclear after a while?

Sinister Petrus wrote:I'll bet all the tea in China that your university text had a large portion of its text in English. I'll bet that amount again that the grammar, save for a few examples, was wholly in English. Classical language textbooks, save for a isolated examples, are at least a century behind modern language teaching techniques. I love my Latin and Greek teachers, but they were teaching memorization of paradigms/grammar rules as the key. I hold them in high esteem, but their instruction didn't teach me to read Greek and Latin as such. I did learn to decode them. Vast amounts of basic, comprehensible beginner Latin taught me how to read.

Actually, I've learned in a Hebrew university so the explanations were in Hebrew but I understand what you mean. I don't think it'd be possible to learn this language without detailed explanations in English or your native tongue. Exclusively immersing yourself in the language, hoping you'd pick up the grammar rules as you go along without relying on Grammar notes,is a method whose motives I understand but am not sure is possible in practice, at leastwith these languages branded "Classical".

Sinister Petrus wrote:(I assume based on your dim view of immersion techniques that) You managed to learn how to read Plato by memorizing vocabulary lists and paradigms. Good for you. Seriously. Just realize that you are in a very small minority. I have no clue how I'm going to get to Plato without some serious pre-reading of Greek. I suspect the majority of language learners are like me (if my reading in second language acquisition theory and personal, albeit anecdotal, experience are the norm).

I didn't memorized paradigms just to read Plato, but it did help recognizing some of the words.What I was more concerned about was to understand the Grammar and idiomatic usage and for thatpurpose I had, and still have, Smyth and LSJ with me at all times. In my opinion -- and again it's onlymine -- I cannot see myself succeeding in learning a language just by immersion.

@NateD26 You really need to take a look at the Ørberg materials (all of them in the Lingua Latina series) in order to understand clearly why Sinister Petrus, others, and I have praised them so highly and why we wish there to be a similar AG course. I am now on Chapter 20 of Lingua Latina, and my admiration for Ørberg's vision and ability continues to increase.

With AG, I continue to go back and forth among various beginning grammars, trying to find the one (or several) that suit(s) me best as an autodidact. I thought that Anne Mahoney's edition of W.H.D. Rouse's First Greek Course, supplemented by her edition of Rouse's Greek Boy reader would do the trick, but I find that the grammar and its exercises are very difficult to follow without a teacher's help (well, it was designed to be used with a teacher) and the reader likewise.

I have gone back to Crosby and Schaeffer mainly because its limited vocabulary (600 words) and short lessons will allow me to learn the basics of Greek grammar rapidly. I am also investigating Crosby's Greek Lessons, which focuses solely on the grammar and vocabulary of Xenophon's Anabasis, in conjunction with his mid-19th-century Greek Grammar, to which Greek Lessons refers. Have bought Thomas Clark's interlinear Greek-English edition of the Anabasis, as well as a lexicon of the Anabasis and an edition of the first four books with copious notes and maps. I like the idea of starting out with a limited lexicon and grammar, focused on one book by one author (Xenophon's Anabasis).

NateD26 wrote:1. A neuter plural subject takes a singular verb. weird rule but it took me a while to get used to it. 2. How many connected sentences with the copula included do you have in mind to appear in the firstchapter? Every sentence? Just a few on the first page? Doesn't the concept of how it works becomeclear after a while?

1. *grumble* I knew that (and forgot as I was writing). 2. Ørberg goes on for about 750 or so words with no verb other than est/sunt in his first chapter. The purported lesson in the chapter is number: singular and plural. In reality,he's actually doing about five things here. a: fixing the case of subject/verb agreement in number, b: introducing the notion of gender, and thus antecedent/noun agreement, c: declension, d: Latin's notion of what word order is, and finally e: setting his story in context by introducing the geography of the Roman empire. It's a remarkable text: I've *never* seen anything like it for any other language. There is a Spanish text that obviously imitates his approach, but it doesn't seem as thorough or well-layered.

Back on topic, I've been thinking about learning Latin and Greek at the same time. The more I think about it, the less I think it is a possible (or necessarily desirable) thing. Are Latin and Greek even that much alike? Obviously, Latin took quite a few low-frequency, high-octane words from Greek, but the grammatical machinery seems very different. Where Latin seems to favor the infinitive, Greek favors the participle. Latin has no augment, Greek emphasizes aspect (relative to Latin). I might go so far as to say that they're about as similar to each other as Old English is to Latin or Greek, and what similarity exists is a result of historical accident rather than a close linguistic relation. To cast it another way: Latin and Greek are about as similar as English and French.

Sinister Petrus wrote:Back on topic, I've been thinking about learning Latin and Greek at the same time. The more I think about it, the less I think it is a possible (or necessarily desirable) thing. Are Latin and Greek even that much alike?

I learned the basic grammar of Latin, which I am now reviewing after a hiatus of some 40 years, before I began studying Greek, which I am also now reviewing, and I think that this approach (Latin before Greek) is better than studying both at the same time. I have found Latin grammar to be simpler than that of Greek. True, it has the ablative, which Greek does not, but its verb system is much less complex. In addition, if English or a Romance language is the learner's native language, he or she will be able to learn Latin vocabulary much faster than Greek because of all the cognates and loan words.

Well... the only latin-greek text I know that could be useful for learning would be a Comenius' latin-greek translation of the Janua Linguarum. I don't know if it follows the steps of the Orbis Sensualium units, or not, but I think after reading several times the Orbis, it would be a quite straightforward reading. The only problem would be the greek abbreviations used.

I found other books, but they aren't intended for learning strictly speaking, but for reading. In any case, they are a Xenophon's Symposion latin-greek edition, and a New Testament interlinear version writen by the spanish Humanist Benito Arias Montano. All books can be found in Google Books, but I don't know if I am already allowed to post links to Google Books, so here you are the editions information: